Wanting to pave the way for negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan, the White House has directed top U.S. diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban, several American and Afghan officials told The New York Times.

The Taliban, which controls or has influence over 59 of Afghanistan's 407 districts, has long said it wants to first discuss peace with the United States, not the Afghan government, but the U.S. has always pushed back. There are about 15,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and the Taliban continues to regularly launch deadly attacks.

Over the last few weeks, several high-ranking American officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to prepare for talks, with Pompeo briefly visiting Kabul and meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Catherine Garcia

Target's coming for you, Amazon and Walmart.

This holiday season, the company is offering free two-day shipping for online orders, covering hundreds of thousands of items, with no minimum purchase. It's a way to undercut competitors like Amazon and Walmart, The Wall Street Journal reports, with Walmart offering free two-day shipping on orders of $35 or more and Amazon providing the same service for Prime members. The promotion will run from Nov. 1 to Dec. 22.

Target CEO Brian Cornell said the company has been converting stores to distribution centers, which cuts shipping costs and enables "our digital growth and strategy." He said about half of all online orders are now fulfilled at stores, and the plan is to fulfill more than 90 percent of all two-day orders from stores. Even with free shipping, Cornell said Target stores will still be filled with customers, as "over 80 percent of all holiday shopping is going to happen in the store." Catherine Garcia

Hurricane Willa made landfall Tuesday night south of Mazatlan, Mexico, as a Category 3 storm, with winds up to 120 mph.

Mazatlan is a popular tourist destination, and several cruise ships bound for the resort town have been diverted and more than 4,000 people along the coast have been evacuated. Officials are warning of life-threatening storm surge, rainfall, and wind in parts of western Mexico, with Willa expected to be one of the most dangerous storms to hit Mexico in years, CBS News reports.

This is a breaking news story and has been updated throughout. Catherine Garcia

An Idaho-based white supremacist group is behind a racist robocall targeting Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee and Florida's Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

Gillum is black, and the same white supremacist group, which operates the website The Road to Power, sent out a racist robocall against Gillum during the primary in August. In the new shockingly racist robocall, a person using a minstrel dialect says he is Gillum, and refers to himself as a "Negro." In the background, minstrel music plays, and a monkey is occasionally heard screeching. The ad also insults Jews, saying they are "the ones that been putting Negroes in charge over the white folk, just like they done after the Civil War."

Gillum's spokesman, Geoff Burgan, called the robocalls "disgusting" and "abhorrent," and said the campaign hopes "that these calls, and the dangerous people who are behind them, are not given any more attention than they already have been." Stephen Lawson, spokesman for Gillum's Republican opponent Ron DeSantis, said their campaign had "absolutely nothing to do" with the robocalls and "joins those in condemning it." In August, DeSantis used the term "monkey it up" in reference to Gillum, but later claimed this had nothing to do with race. His comment was referred to in the robocall. Catherine Garcia

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin plan to meet in Paris in November, National Security Adviser John Bolton said Tuesday.

Discussions are now underway for the meeting, to take place during celebrations on Nov. 11 marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Putin and Trump last met in Helsinki in July.

Bolton is in Moscow to discuss the U.S. soon withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. Russia has called the step "dangerous," and per a transcript provided by the Kremlin, Putin said to Bolton, "As I recall, there is a bald eagle pictured on the U.S. coat of arms. It holds 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other. My question: Has your eagle already eaten all the olives, leaving only the arrows?"

"I didn't bring any olives," Bolton responded. Putin and Bolton met for 90 minutes, and Bolton said he also brought up "objectionable" election meddling, and why it "was particularly harmful for Russian-American relations without producing anything in return." Catherine Garcia

The U.S. is taking its first steps toward punishing Saudi Arabia for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. had identified "at least some of the individuals" suspected to be "responsible" for Khashoggi's murder at Turkey's Saudi consulate on Oct. 2. That includes "those in the intelligence services, the royal court, the foreign ministry, and other Saudi ministries," Pompeo said. The U.S. will withdraw visas from those people and is weighing sanctions against them, among other potential consequences.

As Pompeo made the announcement, Trump was giving a wide-ranging press conference that tackled Khashoggi's death. The Saudi operation was "carried out poorly and the cover-up was one of the worst in the history of cover-ups," Trump said. But he maintained that he wants to "see the facts" before deciding whether to believe Turkish claims that the Saudi government pre-planned and directed the killing.

Also in their Tuesday statements, Pompeo and Trump both reiterated opposition to the migrant caravan heading north through Mexico. Pompeo declared that migrants "will not be successful at getting into the United States illegally, no matter what." The caravan is still roughly 1,000 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Kathryn Krawczyk

President Trump is leaving retribution for Jamal Khashoggi's murder up to Congress — just like the FBI investigation into Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, he says.

In a wide-ranging set of comments on Tuesday, Trump said an alleged Saudi operation to kill the U.S.-based Saudi journalist was "carried out poorly, and the cover-up was one of the worst in the history of coverups." But he says he still wants to "see the facts first" before deciding whether to believe Turkish claims that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was directly behind the murder.

Trump has been reluctant to criticize Saudi involvement in the Oct. 2 killing of Khashoggi in Turkey's Saudi consulate, though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did announce the revocation of visas from Saudi agents said to have killed Khashoggi on Tuesday. But "in terms of what we ultimately do," presumably meaning fuller consequences for the country, Trump says he's "going to leave it up to Congress." That's a "little bit" like what he did for senators who wanted an FBI investigation into Kavanaugh, Trump said.

Trump went on to discuss the Honduran migrant caravan still 1,000 miles from the U.S. border. He previously — and baselessly — claimed "unknown Middle Easterners" were in the throngs marching through Mexico, but said Tuesday "there's no proof" of that being true. He also defended his repeated assertion that he is a "nationalist," claiming he'd "never heard" theories that his comments implied he was a white nationalist. Kathryn Krawczyk